"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
Today is the 50th anniversary of the
assassination of
President John F. Kennedy in
Dallas, Texas. The TV has been littered this month with documentaries and new reports on JFK, his term in office, and ultimately his death. Given the amount of talk about him, I'm only just now coming to understand how much of an icon he was in the eyes of those who remember him. At the time of his death, three years after he was elected, he had the highest approval rating (85% I believe) of any president in modern times. 50 years on, the myriad of conspiracy theories surrounding his assassination are still rife, such as it was an inside job of some sort.
Kennedy was fatally shot by a sniper while traveling with his wife
Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie, in a presidential motorcade in downtown Dallas (shown above) on his way to deliver a speech.
Lee Harvey Oswald was subsequently arrested that same day for the president's murder. Oswald was armed with a rifle and positioned on the sixth floor of the former
Texas School Book Depository building where he worked, overlooking the motorcade. Kennedy was first hit at the base of his neck with the bullet then exiting through his throat and going on to hit the governor sitting directly in front of him. Kennedy can be seen in video footage holding his throat while Jacqui looked on in concern. Just seconds thereafter, Kennedy was hit again in the back of his head, blowing it apart (also captured on video). He was rushed to the nearest hospital but there was nothing they could do. Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson (they were big on middle initials back then apparently) who was elsewhere in Dallas at the time was sworn in as president just two hours later.
The first official investigation into Kennedy's murder by the so-called
Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and wounding the governor. The Commission's findings have proven controversial however and have been both challenged and supported by later studies. Such studies have concluded for example that there was more than one shooter, though the official evidence doesn't support this. Oswald himself denied absolutely everything, but was shot and killed (captured by TV cameras) just two days later while being transferred by the Dallas Police, leaving many questions unanswered. His shooter,
Jack Ruby, was a local bar owner and later said he had been distraught over Kennedy's death. The Warren Commission concluded that Ruby also acted alone, though of course others have hypothesised that Ruby was part of a conspiracy.
Whatever the facts really are, we will likely never know the whole story with absolute certainty, and hence it continues to captivate the nation to this day.